War Crimes...
Lots of discussion about Putin as the latest war criminal. No doubt he is one of the worst, first starting an aggressve war and then acting as a churlish, malevolent victor while pursuing it.
But, until this war is over, how will he be forced to pay for it, and who will force him? International law has changed a lot since I was involved in the periphary of it in Admiralty Law insurance. The US has even closed down its Admiralty Court, throwing a thousand or so years of court decisions to the general court system, with the expected consequences.
But, I digress. I keep saying that the war record is not only written by the victors, but the law is, too. After WW2, we were hypnotized by the foul "experiments" of the Nazis, but told nothing of Operation Paperclip. We weren't told much about the race to get German rocket scientists, either, but that sort of snuck out. Pretty much the same thing with Japanese experiments in Unit 731. MacArthur was pretty much running the show, and he managed to hide all the biological warfare research the Japanese had been doing since Manchuria just in case we could use it.
So, Putin is happily killing mothers and children and reducing cities to rubble. I call that a war crime, too, but what we need is someone to haul Putin and his comrades to court, and then to punishment. Who would that be? Even if Russia has to walk away from Ukraine, how does woever is around get to to haul the Russian boys and girls to court and the noose? Do we even have an agreed upon international law as to what he did?
After all, we bombed Dresden into a bloody pile of rocks and what we did to Hiroshima and Nagasaki has no proper words to describe it. How was that any better than the Long March? It was total war, and maybe it could be argued that shit happens in total war, but who has the call when there really is no winner?
= new reply since forum marked as read
